About Kathy

CLICK HERE for Kathy’s recent interviews and presentations.

Kathy Lynne Marshall is an Ancestor Biographer who works as a Diversity and Inclusion Specialist on behalf of our ancestors. Her books enhance the American Historical Record by adding factual accounts of the lives of women, enslaved African Americans, and other underrepresented groups who helped shape America. 

She leads workshops to guide others in researching and writing their family origins and self-publishing their stories. Kathy has delighted audiences at the Sons and Daughters of the United States Middle Passage and writing conferences, won multiple Book Awards from the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society and Northern California Publishers and Authors. She also served as a consultant to West Virginia’s Beverly Heritage Center to help bring alive the African American experience there.

Kathy has been featured in Sacramento Magazine, The Sacramento Bee, The Sacramento Observer, the Sacramento News & Review, and Elk Grove Citizen. She has been interviewed on CBS-TV and Fox40-TV, American Spark-TV and podcasts like the Research from the National Archives and Beyond, Beyond Kinship, and Speak On It. 

For 36 years, Kathy worked for the California Highway Patrol as a researcher, technical writer, and Manager of their State Traffic Officer Processing System and Selection Research Program. She earned a Masters Degree in Public Administration, with a Minor in Research Methodology, from California State University at Sacramento.

Kathy is also known as the artist named Kanika, for thirty years creating Afrocentric sculptures made from clay, recycled steel, African textiles, glass and wood. Her award-winning artworks have been purchased by collectors worldwide, from galleries, stores like Nordstrom, vendor shows, and online.